The Scripture-Saturated Worship Service
Writing in the same century as Nehemiah lived, the Greek historian Thucydides penned a popular saying: “It is the people, not the walls, that make a city.” We might build upon that concept, summarizing the book of Nehemiah in this way: as God’s people rebuild the wall, God is rebuilding his covenant community under the authority of his Word. This theme is especially seen in chapter 8, which highlights how God’s people love, learn, and live his law.
Nehemiah 8 features three main characters: Ezra (scribe, priest, and Scripture reader), the Levites (Scripture teachers, or we could call them Bible translators and/or exegetes), and “all the people.” It is the laity, however, more than the leaders, that dominate this text. Note that “the people” is repeated eighteen times and “all the people” eleven times. The God-centered worship service at the Water Gate is also, if you will, people-centered. It is people-centered in the sense that we learn here that it was a gathering of men, women, and children (“all who could understand,” v. 2) who wanted to hear and heed the Word.
They Loved the Law
Having looked at the phrase “the people,” we will next divide our summary phrase—God’s people love, learn, and live his law—into three sections. First, God’s people love his law. Verse 1 and the beginning of verse 4 show this point.
And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel (v. 1).
And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they [the people] had made for the purpose. (v. 4a)
This was a megachurch. There were thousands in attendance. But this was no modern-day megachurch service. No one was sitting in the balcony, settling into his conformable seat with a freshly brewed cappuccino in hand as he waited for the soft jazz/soft sermon entertainment to begin. No! Rather, here we find God’s people gathering, building, speaking, listening, standing, and bowing. “Give me the Word!” was their sentiment.
Besides the gathering, building, speaking, listening, standing, and bowing, another action that demonstrates their affection toward the Word was their double “Amen” at the end of the Scripture reading.
And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and as he opened it all the people stood. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. (vv. 5–6a)
To say “Amen” is to express agreement. It means: “We believe it,” “We agree,” “It is true,” or “So let it be!” The church father Jerome “commented that in the early church, when visitors used to come, they were commonly frightened at the amen.” They said, “It had the sound of thunder.” Does your church say “Amen” after the Bible is read? How about a double “Amen”? How about raising your hands (as they did) and giving the double “Amen” so loud it wakes the babies in the nursery!
Because of the abuses that go with it, we underestimate the value of certain words and certain postures as real expressions of love. The typical story of an engagement proposal ends with the man upon his knees, confessing his love. It would seem odd to us if the proposal ended otherwise. Just imagine if a bride-to-be said her proposal happened this way: “He knocked on the door, turned his back to me, stared into the sky, and muttered under his breath, ‘Um, will you marry me?’” Such a proposal would be preposterous. There can be a deadness in many churches that are full of rote confessions and robotic postures, but that does not mean that such confessions and postures can’t be faithful and appropriate representations of the congregation’s earnest love for God and his Word. In fact, the best worship is when both heart and hands are raised in devotion—when, for example, we stand to hear the Word read, we stand also in our hearts, lifting up our love to the Lord for his divine revelation. “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Ps. 119:97).
They Learned the Law
Beyond loving the law, God’s people also learned it. Without a doubt—from top to tail—Nehemiah 8 depicts a worship service centered on the written Word of God:
Top: “And all the people gathered as one man. . . . And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law.” (v. 1)
Tail: “And day by day, from the first day to the last day, he read from the Book of the Law of God.” (v. 18)
The law is mentioned nine times in this chapter. This emphasis is interesting in light of the fact that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah concentrate on the temple. Of course, what we have in Nehemiah 8 is not a new dedication of the temple, such as was done in Solomon’s time. Rather, it is a reverent and royal reception of divine revelation. As Derek Kidner writes: “At the dedication of Solomon’s Temple there had been glory and beauty, natural and supernatural, to overwhelm the worshippers. Here the focus, apart from a wooden platform, was a scroll—or more exactly, what was written in it.”[1] The Protestant Reformation introduced an important architectural shift—giving the pulpit, not the altar, the place of prominence. For projecting sound and the idea of authority, the Protestants built tall and large pulpits, and often in front of the church platform they placed a large, opened Bible translated into the language of the people. There was also a Communion table, but it was set to the side or behind the pulpit. It is this kind of deliberate positioning that we see in our text. “The book of the Torah,” as William Dumbrell explains, “is literally placed at the center of the united people.”[2] It was the Torah, not the temple, that then, as it does now, served as “the foundation” for covenant community life.[3]
In graduate school, I took a class on the history of revivals. We began with the “revivals” recorded in Scripture and then walked through the important revivals in Christian history. Our professor argued that there were three characteristics to all true works of Spirit-empowered revivals: (1) emotions were shown, (2) order was established, and (3) the emphasis on the Word of God as the center of worship was restored. Nehemiah 8 certainly fits under this rubric.
Notice the emotions expressed. In verses 9–12, people express a mixture of sorrow and joy. At first, when they heard the Word, they grieved over their sins. With each commandment read, it must have felt like blows from a hammer as the perfect Word pounded them with its purity. “Yet, despite the seriousness of their sin, the people were urged to dry their tears,” because it was the Feast of Booths, and within ten days of the Feast of Booths would be the Day of Atonement, that day of mercy when all their sins “would be fully, immediately and irrevocably pardoned.”[4] So, as is true of any true work of the Spirit, there was the right mixture of emotions—sorrow over sin and joy over salvation.
Furthermore, as is true in any true work of the Spirit, we see the establishment of order. This characteristic may surprise readers who presume that the Holy Spirit is synonymous with spontaneity. There can indeed be spontaneity in worship, but it should all end in order. Recall how Paul concluded his section on spiritual gifts (or the abuse of them) in 1 Corinthians 12–14: “But all things should be done decently and in order” (14:40). The apostle tells the super-spiritual Christians in Corinth that the Spirit desires the church service to have both decency and order.
For some Christians, the word liturgy has a negative connotation. To them, that word fits churches that don’t preach the Bible. But the word liturgy comes from the Greek word latreuo (meaning “to work or serve”), which is found several places in the New Testament. So, liturgy is a Bible word, and a good (not bad) one, and “one’s work in worship” is not condemnable but commendable: “There must be some holy sweat if you are to please and glorify God.”[5] Some think we can divide churches into two categories—liturgical and non-liturgical. However, in reality, every church is liturgical because all churches have an order of service. Even the most charismatic churches, which claim they just let the Spirit have his way, usually follow the same order of service every Sunday. As R. Kent Hughes notes:
All churches have liturgies, even those which would call themselves “non- liturgical.” In fact, having no liturgy is a liturgy! Relaxed charismatic services may be as liturgical in their format as a high-church service—and in some cases more rigid.[6]
So, the question is not whether such and such a church has a liturgy (order of service). Of course it does. All churches are liturgical in that sense. Rather, the question is this: Is its liturgy biblical or unbiblical? Is its worship governed by the Word or by something or someone else—perhaps the whims of culture or personal preference? Nehemiah 8 gives us a biblical picture of a God-honoring liturgy: a call to worship, a formal reading of Scripture, an oral exposition or explanation of Scripture, and a celebration of a sacred meal. Does this seem familiar? Yes! For nearly 2,500 years, God’s people have followed that basic liturgy. God is not a God of disorder. Just as he sent his Spirit at the beginning of time to bring order to creation, so he still sends his Spirit in these last days to bring order to his new creation—the church.
In Nehemiah 8, we see a true work of the Spirit. It has all the marks: emotions are shown, order is established, and the emphasis on the Word of God as the center of worship is restored.
Speaking of the Word, don’t be afraid to be a bookish church, if your bookishness is Bible-bookishness. We are a people of the Book because God wrote a book. He didn’t produce a movie. He didn’t record a music video. He wrote a book! And the people in Nehemiah’s day loved that book! And because they loved the Word of God, they learned it. Is there any learning in your church’s liturgy? Does your service begin with “all who could understand” assembling to hear the Word (vv. 1–2) and “study” it (v. 13), and end with people understanding “the words that were declared to them” (v. 12b)? Hosea 4:6 reads “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Some of that destruction, it is my contention, is in our churches today because we have tossed out the bookishness of Christianity. It used to be said that God’s people were “a people of the Book.” Sadly, I don’t think that would be an accurate assessment today. Perhaps “People of the YouTube Clip” or “People of the 3-Minute Skit” would be a more accurate assessment. Don’t be ashamed to be a bookish church. Hold high the Book! Seek to teach men, women, and children the content of the Bible. Engrave Nehemiah 8:8 above the church doors, upon the preacher’s pulpit, and within the pew Bibles: “They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.”
They Lived the Law
Nehemiah 8 shows us that because God’s people loved the law, they learned it, and they also lived it. Authentic worship effects our ethics! Notice how nicely what is said in verses 13–15 (learning) transitions into verse 16 and what follows (living). I highlight below this transition from learning the law to living the law:
And they found it written in the Law that the Lord had commanded by Moses that the people of Israel should dwell in booths during the feast of the seventh month, and that they should proclaim it and publish it in all their towns and in Jerusalem, “Go out to the hills and bring branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm, and other leafy trees to make booths, as it is written.” So the people went out and brought them and made booths for themselves, each on his roof, and in their courts and in the courts of the house of God, and in the square at the Water Gate and in the square at the Gate of Ephraim. (vv. 14–16)
Verse 18 also highlights the transition from learning (“And day by day, from the first day to the last day, he read from the Book of the Law of God”) to living (“They kept the feast seven days, and on the eighth day there was a solemn assembly, according to the rule”). From early morning until mid-day, all of them listened to the Bible being read to them—“the ears of all the people were attentive” (v. 3). As we think on the wandering, grumbling, rebellious people of the Old Testament, this is indeed “rare responsiveness.”[7] What (or who) has gotten into them?
The Holy Spirit is the answer! I say this because the Spirit, while not mentioned in chapter 8, is mentioned in chapter 9. The prayer recorded there mentions the secret work of the Spirit in the life of Israel: “You gave your good Spirit to instruct them” (v. 20). Moreover, verse 30 states, “Many years you bore with them and warned them by your Spirit through your prophets.” Like Joel 2 (cf. Acts 2), Nehemiah 8 is a down payment of the new covenant. But even a down payment is a real payment. Put differently, this is not the full, final work of the Spirit in the church, but it is a real work.
What does all this mean for those who live in and under the new covenant? It means that we are to “be doers of the word, and not hearers only” (James 1:22). We who love and have learned the Word ought to live the Word. We ought to live out, by the power of the Spirit, all that is written in the Bible for us.
Nehemiah 8 shows us a high moment in Israel’s history, when God’s people loved the law, learned the law, and lived out the law. Moreover, it teaches the church today—we who have Christ’s indwelling Spirit—that we ought to (by the power of the Spirit) love/desire the Word, study/know the Word, and walk/live according to the Word. When so many churches don’t know why they do what they do or don’t do what they know they should do, I write this short reflection on this ancient text with the desire to ground you in God’s revelation about worship and about keeping the Bible at the center of our services on Sunday and throughout the week.
This resource is part of the series Made Like Him: Reflections on Formation and Gathered Worship. Click Here to explore more resources from this series.
Notes:
1. See Raymond Brown, Nehemiah, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998), 127.
2. Derek Kidner, Ezra & Nehemiah, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1979), 105–106.
3. William J. Dumbrell, The Faith of Israel: A Theological Survey of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 320.
4. Ibid.
5. Brown, Nehemiah, 134.
6. Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man, 115.
7. Ibid.
Adapted from The Pastor's Book, Edited by R. Kent Hughes and Douglas Sean O'Donnell © 2015, Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.
Douglas Sean O’Donnell is the Senior Vice President of Bible Publishing at Crossway. He previously served as the Pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Elgin, IL. as a senior lecturer in Biblical Studies and Practical Theology at Queensland Theological College in Brisbane, Australia. He has authored, edited, and contributed to a number of books, including two children’s books, six commentaries on the Bible, and The Pastor’s Book with R. Kent Hughes. Doug holds a PhD from the University of Aberdeen and is a member of the St. John Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
